Ballerina of the Boardroom Making Plans

Rachel Moore, a former American Ballet Theatre dancer who became head of the company, is the Los Angeles Music Center’s chief executive, choreographing the artistic and business futures of Walt Disney Concert Hall, Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Grand Park.

In a profile on Friday, the Los Angeles Times described Moore, appointed for the chief executive position last June, as a, “ballerina of the boardroom who peppers her sentences with business jargon,” and could nimbly reconcile business with performance.

One of Moore’s initiatives will be fostering artistic partnership between the Music Center's resident companies, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale and Center Theatre Group. She is also calling for an arts festival.

“I think festivals are a huge opportunity,” she says. “I would love to see a summer festival, something like an Edinburgh Festival. Downtown is exploding, so we have a huge opportunity.”

“If we had programming a little avant-garde, young people might see this as cool, and that is one way to start training people of the next generation to come to the Music Center, to show that it can be a welcoming place to people who are not elite,” she continued. “There is this perception that this Music Center is for the one percent, even if that perception is not true.”